Apple Preps for New Tablet (The Wall Street Journal) Apple’s component suppliers in Asia are preparing for mass production in September of a tablet computer with a smaller screen than the iPad, people familiar with the situation said, suggesting a launch for the device is near. Two of the people said that the tablet’s screen will likely be smaller than 8 inches. The Next Web According to The Journal, Apple is likely to call upon LG Display and Au Optronics to supply the smaller screens for its new tablet. If, and it’s still a big if at this point, we see an iPad in October, it’s likely that it would enter production as early as August or September. Bloomberg News The product won’t have the high-definition screen featured on the iPad that was released in March, one of the people said. The new device will probably have a price closer to Google’s Nexus 7 tablet and Amazon’s Kindle Fire, both of which have 7-inch screens and cost $199. CNN If the rumors are true, it would be Apple’s biggest departure yet from the vision of co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, who died last year. Jobs was adamant that anything smaller than the iPad wouldn’t deliver the full “tablet experience.” CNET Last week, Google debuted the 7-inch Nexus 7 tablet, which will likely end up serving as the prime competition to Apple’s anticipated 7-inch iPad. Microsoft’s Windows-powered Surface tablet, announced in June, has a larger 10.6-inch display, but pricing has yet to be announced.

Why Censoring Social Media Might Mean More-Violent Protests (GigaOM) Cutting off access to social media during times of civil unrest might actually lead to more violence than no censorship at all. This is according to two European researchers who built a computer model showing that high levels of censorship (e.g., Hosni Mubarak’s decision to turn off Egypt’s Internet) result in sustained periods of violent activity, whereas no censorship leads to spiky periods of violent outbursts broken up by relatively long periods of relative calm.

Justin Bieber Gains 6 Million Twitter Followers in Four Months (Los Angeles Times) In March, Justin Bieber had 18 million followers on Twitter. Four months and a best-selling album later, that number has climbed to 24.3 million. Only one other person has broken the 24 million barrier on the social media site: Lady Gaga, who currently has 26.5 million followers.

Facebook, Zynga, Google Jockey for Top Talent (USA Today) If you haven’t been to the company spa, arcade, bar or bowling alley, you probably work outside of Silicon Valley. Technology companies are lavishing employees with perks here at a time when much of the nation is experiencing just the opposite: job cuts, belt-tightening at the office and the strains of a generally sour economy.

GM and Facebook: It’s Complicated, but it Might Work Out (AllFacebook) Not long after General Motors pulled its $10 million advertising campaign from Facebook, the Detroit auto giant is considering connecting with the social network again, The Wall Street Journal reports. Bloomberg reported that GM is willing to advertise through Facebook again if the auto maker sees sufficient return on investment.

Mormons Use Facebook, Apps to Increase Political Outreach (Mashable) Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints have begun leveraging their evangelizing networks through smartphone apps to help draw support for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign. The Mormon church has also expanded traditional pavement-pounding evangelizing with a virtual experience, now reaching out to people more through social networks, like Facebook and Twitter, than in person.

We Could Build an Open Twitter, but Would Anyone Use it? (GigaOM) Amid the recent brouhaha over Twitter’s future, a number of critics have proposed duplicating the network using open-source tools and principles. The problem is that others have tried to do exactly that and have mostly failed to achieve any traction.

Amazon Cloud Outages Causing Customer Defection: Dating Site Says it’s Splitsville (VentureBeat) Amazon’s repeated recent cloud outages are causing at least one customer defection. Dating auction site What’s Your Price is leaving Amazon for a Fiberhub, a Web- hosting company in Las Vegas. Nev. Amazon went down on June 14 due to a power outage at its Virginia data center. And on June 29, the same center went down again, taking Netflix, Instagram, Pinterest and other sites with it.